The Game of the Rose, or Umberto Hears an Eco

Fifty-plus years later reflections (a very slow mirror)

By Ed Goldman

In the 18 years I lived in Southern California, the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena (now relocated) and the parade that preceded it (canceled this year) loomed large every New Year’s Day. For me, each became a rite of passage.

I attended only one game, with my brother Stuart, when I was about 14 and he was 18. I have absolutely no idea who played. We were there, Stu told me, to help tear down the then-wooden goal post at the conclusion and try to leave with a piece of it as a keepsake. 

In the last quarter of the game, we pushed our way through now-standing spectators to get as close to the field as possible. Since the goalpost tear-down was even more a part of the Rose Bowl’s lore than the game, none of the security guards made any real attempts to organize or hold us back. And sure enough, once the game ended and the opposing teams had stopped leaping into each other arms or making clenched-teeth death threats (depending on if they’d won or lost), about 150 of us, mainly male and youngish, stormed both goalposts, yanking them out of the ground then breaking off slabs or chunks as mementos. 

Six guys wrested Stu’s piece from his grasp. But for some reason, I was able to hang onto my splintered relic, despite being drawn into a four-way fistfight over looting rights (there is no honor among goalpost thieves). I’ll confess that I had an advantage: a few “moves,” owing to my being a boxing fan (and later spending a couple of summers sparring, which proved that fandom doesn’t always graduate to ability). But what won the day was my love of old western movies, from which I picked up a few dirty-fighting techniques by watching saloon brawls, a staple of the genre.

Three years later, I was going steady with Kim Hyland, my high school/early college girlfriend (whom I began re-courting in September 2019, if you’re journaling, though we seem to have decided there may have been a solid reason behind our not dating each other for half a century. I guess she wasn’t just trying to make me jealous). 

We decided somewhat spontaneously, which is how you do things when you’re 17, to drive up to Pasadena on New Year’s Eve and join the thousands of people camped out on Colorado Boulevard waiting for the parade to start at 8 a.m. We’d brought blankets, hats, scarfs, beach chairs and a thermos of hot chocolate and spent the hours waiting for the parade to start by snuggling, laughing and haphazardly napping next to and atop each other—the latter in the manner of puppies (please keep your journaling appropriate for a family audience).

By 8 a.m. we were semi-comatose, the morning had grown oppressively sunny and each wanted to ask the other the most important question in a romantic relationship: “Can we leave now?” On the drive home, Kim fell sweetly asleep on my shoulder. I still don’t know who won the Rose Bowl game that day but I won the parade.